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Modern man's besetting temptation is to sacrifice his direct perceptions and spontaneous feelings to his reasoned reflections to prefer in all circumstances the verdict of his intellect to that of his immediate intuitions.

Aldous Huxley

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Aldous Huxley
Age: 69 †
Born: 1894
Born: July 26
Died: 1963
Died: November 22
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Professor
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Godalming
Surrey
Aldous Leonard Huxley
Perception
Perceptions
Sacrifice
Spontaneous
Direct
Immediate
Circumstances
Intuition
Besetting
Modern
Temptation
Intuitions
Feelings
Prefer
Reasoned
Men
Intellect
Reflections
Reflection
Verdict

More quotes by Aldous Huxley

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If we must play the theological game, let us never forget that it is a game. Religion, it seems to me, can survive only as a consciously accepted system of make-believe.
Aldous Huxley
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What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes - ah, they have all the necessary leisure.
Aldous Huxley
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We live together, we act on, and react to, one another but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. [...] By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable.
Aldous Huxley
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Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.
Aldous Huxley
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In the contexts of religion and politics, words are not regarded as standing, rather inadequately, for things and events on the contrary things and events are regarded as particular illustrations of words.
Aldous Huxley
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Only one more indispensable massacre of Capitalists or Communists or Fascists or Christians or Heretics, and there we are in the Golden Future.
Aldous Huxley
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An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.
Aldous Huxley
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Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.
Aldous Huxley
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Knowledge is an affair of symbols and is, all too often, a hindrance to wisdom, the uncovering of the self from moment to moment
Aldous Huxley
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Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.
Aldous Huxley
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One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons-that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.
Aldous Huxley
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How difficult it is to sound persuasive at the top of one's voice!
Aldous Huxley
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Plasticene and self-expression will not solve the problems of education. Nor will technology and vocational guidance nor the classics and the Hundred Best Books.
Aldous Huxley
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The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to oversimplify complex matters. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth.
Aldous Huxley
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Indifference to all the refinements of life--it's really shocking. Just Calvinism, that's all. Calvinism without the excuse of Calvin's theology.
Aldous Huxley
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Nothing is more dreadful than a cold, unimpassioned indulgence. And love infallibly becomes cold and unimpassioned when it is too lightly made.
Aldous Huxley
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To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of work on the basis of those inspirations.
Aldous Huxley
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There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.
Aldous Huxley
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All that is needed is money and a candidate who can be coached to look sincere. Political principles and plans for specific action have come to lose most of their importance. The personality of the candidate, the way he is projected by the advertising experts, are the things that really matter.
Aldous Huxley
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Ultimate Reality is not clearly and immediately apprehended except by those who have made themselves loving, pure in heart and poor in spirit.
Aldous Huxley